Murder, She Wrote--A Date with Murder Page 2

  Meanwhile, thank heavens a medical professional had been there. Seth had recognized a pulse in Hal’s jugular vein and shouted for the crowd that had gathered to call 911. He’d also instructed people to direct the paramedics to where Hal lay, while continuing to tend to him.

  “Every second counts in situations like this,” Cabot Cove’s beloved physician said, kneeling over Hal to continue his CPR efforts.

  Although the ambulance and its crew of two EMS paramedics arrived within minutes, it seemed an eternity to me. Cabot Cove’s emergency personnel don’t typically have much to keep them busy, although that was changing with an influx of new residents packing the town to its very gills, especially in the summer season, which was now drawing to a close. But the speed with which they showed up impressed me. Hal was fitted with an oxygen mask and rushed into the back of the ambulance. Babs, who’d been standing at the rear of the crowd, her fist pressed tightly against her lips to stifle the cry of anguish building inside, climbed into the vehicle with her husband. The sun was setting and, with it, summer itself. I could only hope the darkening sky didn’t prove a portent for Hal’s prognosis.

  * * *

  • • •

  When Babs and Hal Wirth had arrived in Cabot Cove almost ten years ago, they injected a burst of youthful energy to a town that had begun to grow insular and perhaps too set in its ways. Their daughter, Alyssa, was in grade school when they chose our village as their new home, and Babs immediately threw herself into town activities, particularly as an active participant in the PTA and the historical society. She was also a skilled painter. My friend Mara was delighted to hang an exhibit of Babs’s work in her luncheonette, and one of Babs’s best-loved pieces, a seascape of the view beyond the bluffs, hung permanently on the luncheonette’s wall. I’d also bought one of her paintings, now displayed proudly in my own home.

  Babs had become one of my most treasured friends, a bond that became tighter as the years passed. A woman I’ve trusted with my innermost sentiments and secrets, she’d always been there whenever I felt the need to reminisce about my late husband, Frank, and had done her best to put a smile on my face, a consideration I was ready to return in kind. Now that such a time had come, it would fall on me to help support her through this ordeal, facing the possibility that she was about to lose her beloved husband, just as I had lost mine. Call us kindred spirits, but not for the reasons you’d ordinarily choose.

  And maybe my fears were premature. Hal would be receiving excellent medical care, after all. People survived heart attacks all the time, especially when that care came quickly, as it had in this case. Still, there was something . . .

  My mind snapped back to reality when the ambulance turned so abruptly that Seth hit the brakes and swerved to stay on its tail, drawing so close he had to jam down on the pedal yet again.

  “Sorry about that,” he said, hands squeezing the wheel tight enough to drain the blood from his fingers.

  The ambulance’s flashing lights dimmed a bit as we fell back to a more comfortable distance.

  “Are you okay to drive?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “You did have a beer or two.”

  “Hours ago. And that was all,” he said, clearly wanting no part of this conversation. “I’m perfectly fine, Jessica. Besides, I’d better be sober enough to drive; it’s not as if you can take the wheel.”

  I started to say something, but he rolled right over my words.

  “Backseat drivers are bad enough, but when they don’t even have a driver’s license, like you, Jessica Fletcher, it’s best to keep your advice to yourself.”

  I made myself laugh, and Seth appeared to relax a bit. Although his tone could, at times, be brash and even insulting, I knew he didn’t mean it, at least not with me. He was one of my dearest friends. I rolled down my window halfway, trying to rid the car of its stale, stuffy feeling and hoping the fresh air might snap Seth back to full alertness.

  I changed the subject to the reason we were following the ambulance containing Hal Wirth and his distraught wife, Babs. “You said Hal hadn’t discussed anything about his physical health with you.”

  “Ayuh.”

  “What about mental?” I pestered, unable to help myself and thinking of the rumors that Hal and Babs had been having some . . . difficulties.

  Seth remained silent.

  “He’s my friend, too, Seth.”

  “But you’re not his doctor. Not last time I checked anyway.”

  He stopped there, but I could tell whatever they’d discussed must have unsettled him. Dr. Seth Hazlitt was seldom off-kilter, but something had clearly disturbed him today, even before Hal’s heart attack.

  The ambulance entered a traffic circle leading to the main entrance of the hospital. We followed it until it veered off to the emergency entrance. Seth pulled into his usual designated spot in the parking lot, reserved for staff. We could see the emergency entrance from our vantage point and spotted two nurses and a physician rush outside to meet the paramedics. One held an oxygen mask to Hal’s face while the other guided the gurney from the ambulance into the hospital.

  I was poised to get out of Seth’s car, but I noticed that he hadn’t moved, his hands on the wheel, the motor still running. He stared thoughtfully out the window.

  “Is there anything I can do to help?” I asked him. “Did that conversation you had with Hal have anything to do with Babs?”

  Seth turned off the engine and faced me. “It had everything to do with Babs.”

  I expected him to continue, but I had to let my mind fill in the blanks when he didn’t. Their conversation must’ve involved those rumored marital problems the Wirths were having. What else could it be? I’d read over the years that it was a commonplace enough occurrence with couples when their child left for college. Having never enjoyed that experience myself, I couldn’t relate, though I could relate to the fact that every marriage endures difficulties. I imagined that Hal and Babs were going through a rough patch and that Hal had chosen to confide in Seth about the particulars.

  “Anything you’d care to share?” I asked him, unable to help myself.

  Seth scolded me with a stare. “Doctor-patient privilege, Jessica. Don’t make me keep repeating that.”

  I eased open my door. “Let’s go see how your patient is doing.”

  * * *

  • • •

  The corridor leading to Hal’s room was painted a pasty pink color that made me uneasy. Everything about hospitals, in fact, made me uncomfortable: the colors, the lifeless artwork, the equally stale expressions on the staff’s faces. They serve the function of mollifying patients, I suppose, yet this had always produced the opposite effect on me.

  But hospital decorations aside, what mattered was the medical attention that Hal would receive. Despite being in a relatively small town in Maine, our hospital and its staff provided excellent care, certainly on a par with many big-city medical institutions.

  Babs Wirth sat outside her husband’s room. The door opened and closed as doctors and technicians came and went, their sense of urgency obvious in their body language and the pace with which they moved. She spotted Seth and me and moved toward us, her motions stiff and robotic.

  “Oh, Jessica, it’s so good of you to come,” Babs said, giving me a hug. “And you, too, Seth. I don’t know what I would have done, what would’ve happened, if you weren’t around when . . .”

  “Whatever you need,” I said, “we’re here. Hal seemed so healthy this afternoon, so full of life and upbeat. I can’t explain what happened. I wish I could, but I can’t.”

  “I don’t understand!” Babs said, her voice cracking as it rose. “Alyssa would always scold him about his diet, but I never thought it actually made that much of a difference. He’s so young.”

  “It’s not unthinkable,” Seth said, “that someone Hal’s age had a heart attack
.” He pulled up a chair and patted Babs’s knee.

  “But at forty-seven?”

  “Even at forty-seven,” Seth said. “That age makes the odds of surviving with only minimal damage much better. Trust me,” he added, trying to push some lightness into his voice. “I’m a doctor.”

  Babs tried to smile, but failed, turning her gaze back toward the room in which Hal was being treated. “What’s going on in there, Seth? Tell me so I can picture it, so I can feel better.”

  Before Seth could answer, the door opened and Jacob Waverly, one of Cabot Cove’s top cardiologists, emerged and walked toward us at the head of the corridor. He greeted Seth and me before he turned his gaze on Babs.

  “Let’s take a walk,” Waverly said to her, a dour expression stretched over his face.

  I grasped Seth’s hand as we watched the doctor lead Babs down the hall so they could speak in private. When they were far enough away, the doctor held Babs’s shoulders and spoke to her, his own frame stiffening. I watched her knees buckle, the shoulders Waverly had been grasping sag.

  “He’s dead?” she rasped, barely getting the words out before the sobs consumed her.

  Seth and I looked at each other, then fell into step together toward Babs.

  Waverly watched us take up positions on either side of her, clearly grateful for our presence.

  “It was a massive coronary,” Waverly said, to all of us. “I have no doubt of that much.”

  “At forty-seven?” Babs managed, using a sleeve to blot her eyes. “He’s only forty-seven!”

  I could see she was shaking, her glazed expression indicative of the shock I had grown all too familiar with over the years.

  “Unusual for sure, but not unprecedented,” Waverly tried, in a tone somewhere between reassuring and matter-of-fact. “Given his health history, it could be genetic, something in his family.”

  Babs tried to take a deep breath, but gave up halfway through and just nodded. “Hal’s father died of a heart attack when he was only fifty-five.”

  “I wish I had more information to share with you,” said Waverly, no longer trying to sound comforting. “Something more definitive. For now, you need to know there’s nothing you, nor anyone else, could have done. Getting him here so fast was the only thing that gave him a chance, however slight.” He swallowed hard; the kind of news he’d just delivered was something you never get used to. “If there’s anything I can do for you in the meantime, Mrs. Wirth, just let me know.”

  With that, Waverly squeezed Seth’s shoulder, as if to turn the reins over to him, and walked away, back toward Hal’s room.

  “I want to see him,” Babs said, her voice pleading, on the verge of breaking down again.

  “That might not be a good idea at the moment,” Seth said.

  “But I feel—I feel so lost. I thought maybe . . .”

  Her voice trailed off. Her lips trembled. Her eyes flitted, tearing up again.

  “That’s natural,” I said, remembering how I felt the day that Frank died.

  I also know that while the intensity of the pain of losing a loved one lessens as time passes, it never completely goes away. Kind of like the way amputees describe still feeling their lost limbs.

  “I’ll stay with you,” I told Babs.

  “You don’t have to.”

  “I want to.”

  “No,” Babs said, with a firmness that surprised me. “I—I need to be alone. There’s so much to do, so much that has to be handled.”

  “Let me help you.”

  Babs wasn’t looking at me anymore; she wasn’t looking at anything. “I have to call Alyssa. She needs to come home. I need to get her home.”

  “I can help with whatever you need. We’re having dinner tonight, you and me. I’ll pick something up for us.”

  “You don’t have to make sure I eat, Jessica. I could stand to lose a few pounds anyway,” she said, trying for a smile that didn’t come. “And there’s all that leftover food from the party.”

  Which she’d asked Cabot Cove Catering to donate to the nearest food pantry, I recalled, but didn’t remind her.

  “You shouldn’t be alone,” I said instead, “and I’m not taking no for an answer.”

  “Count me in, too,” said Seth. “And I’m happy to pick up the food. I’m a wizard with takeout.”

  “Sounds like an offer we can’t refuse,” I said to Babs, forcing a smile as weak as hers.

  She gave me a long, tight hug, then did the same with Seth. Her cell phone chimed from her handbag, and I thought of all the people who’d been at the gathering calling to inquire about Hal’s status. Just a sample of what Babs’s life was going to be like for the immediate future, much of which was sure to be lost in the fog of grief. That’s the somewhat cruel thing about well-meaning folks offering you their prayers and condolences; their hearts are in the right place, but they don’t realize their efforts will pass like water through a sieve. And every time Babs answered the phone, at least for a while, she’d be forced to relive the moment she was living now, starting with the call to her daughter, Alyssa.

  Seth and I reluctantly left her alone in the hospital and returned to his car.

  “She’s a strong lady,” Seth offered as he climbed behind the wheel and started the engine.

  “I was, too—at first,” I said, fastening my seat belt. “Seth?” I resumed.

  “What?”

  I wanted to say something didn’t feel right about this, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Dr. Waverly was right about men Hal’s age not being immune to heart attacks, especially with his family history. Still, something was gnawing at me. A feeling, a sense of something somehow out of place, like an itch I couldn’t quite reach . . .

  “What, Jessica?” Seth repeated.

  “Nothing,” I said, clearing my throat. “I just hope you’re right.”

  But I couldn’t chase that feeling, or my worries about whatever Hal had discussed with Seth just a few hours earlier, from my mind.

  Chapter Three

  There were no lights on in Babs’s house, or at least none visible through the front windows, as Seth turned into the driveway a few hours later. Babs had called me to say she was leaving the hospital and again tried to shun our request to bring over some food. I told her we’d already picked it up—a lie, yes, but a well-intentioned one.

  “I wonder if she fell straight asleep when she got home,” I said, a bit worried. “I know she takes those pills occasionally.”

  “After all she’s been through, I wouldn’t be surprised,” Seth said, his expression squeezed into something between a frown and a scowl. “Let’s bring the food in anyway and see if she’s awake. We promised her dinner and company, and the two of us standing on her doorstep might be just what the doctor ordered—literally.”

  “When Frank died, it was the friends persistently trying to cheer me up that made the biggest difference in my life.”

  “Present company included, I trust,” Seth said, managing a smile.

  I put my hand on his arm. “I want to be that kind of friend to Babs now.”

  We took the food—lentil soup, cold cuts, bread, and a Greek salad, all from Mara’s Luncheonette—and knocked on the front door.

  No answer.

  I knocked again.

  Nothing.

  I stepped onto the moist summer grass and over to a dark window. I put my hand to the glass to diminish the glare and peered inside into the Wirths’ living room. It was still a mess from their Labor Day party, with paper plates and utensils strewn about the tables. Some must have been blown to the floor by the breeze passing through the windows she’d neglected to close before joining her now-late husband in the ambulance. I was surprised Cabot Cove Catering hadn’t cleaned the place up, but thought perhaps they wouldn’t be sure if they should, given that Hal had suffered the heart
attack on the premises. The way things are today, so litigious, people are always afraid of lawsuits, and it might have been just that very thing that had kept the company from completing its duties.

  The events that had transpired seemed like they’d occurred days ago, not hours. It felt like I was returning to the scene of a crime, something I’d grown all too accustomed to over the years, although that clearly wasn’t the case here. Unless . . .

  I fought back the thought, resisting that odd sense that had struck me in the hospital.

  “If Babs wants to be alone, we should let her,” Seth said. “We should let her grieve however she needs to. We can bring her breakfast in the morning instead.”

  “I don’t think she’d leave all the lights off even if she went to sleep, Seth.”

  “Let me give her a call on her cell phone, then. Maybe she’s in one of the back rooms.”

  The Wirths’ house was expansive, Hal’s success in the world of high technology having garnered considerable perks. I recalled now him once speaking of his admiration for Deacon Westhausen when Westhausen expressed interest in relocating to Cabot Cove. Since they had plenty in common, I could understand that. I’d yet to meet Westhausen myself, and it had nothing to do with being supplanted as Cabot Cove’s most famous resident either. No one was ever more right than F. Scott Fitzgerald when he wrote that the rich were different from you and me, as evidenced by the monstrosity of an estate Deacon Westhausen was building on a previously pristine patch of land now only he would be able to enjoy.

  No, I wasn’t jealous of him at all, I mused as I walked to another window to see if I could spot any indications of Babs’s presence.

  “The front door’s open!” Seth called. “I’ll leave the food inside the foyer, or maybe stow it in the fridge, and we can let her be alone.”